Postcards from the Imagination

Posted by Ginger at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jordan ponders names for his imaginary anthology here. I'm going to call mine, See Here, Can You Spare a Moment?

Addendum: Posted the first poem, Joshua Clover's "Alas, that is the name of our town; I have been concealing it all this time."

Posted by Ginger at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"[Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced] is stunning as a sequence. I'd be interested to know what you think of the poems as discrete units."

I read the book last night, probably too quickly, before bed. And yes, I see your point. The poems seem to derive much of their emotional weight from being parts of a larger narrative. Had I encountered the poems individually (e.g. in a periodical), or even encountered the book without already knowing its "story," I'm sure these pieces would have read much differently. Does that make the book less valuable, less accomplished? (Not that you've implied as much, Anon, but others have in different contexts.) Probably not. If I try to imagine these poems having been written differently, with the narrative context embedded in each piece, I imagine the book might quickly become dull, repetitive, or even melodramatic. And after all, if one were really bothered by the "failure" of each poem to stand on its own, one could easily think of Into Perfect Spheres as a single long poem with section titles. In that case, it would simply be a matter of rearranging labels, not altering the work.

Other questions I found myself asking: How would I have received these poems were I not a mother myself? What if I had read them when my own child was younger, when all my maternal anxieties were still relatively fresh? What if my daughter were not now about the same age as the girls in the book? Would I have read more slowly and allowed myself to feel their loss more fully?

Oddly, the the children for whom this book is a kind of elegy hardly appear in it. Is that why I felt less than I expected to reading it? Also (and I mean this not as disparagement, but merely observation), there was nothing in the book that didn't feel thoroughly sanctioned. That is, I never felt as though my sympathies were being challenged in any significant way. And it was all almost too beautiful.

As elegies go, I probably found Josh Beckman's "Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter," (for poet David Avidan, in Things Are Happening) a more striking example. For instance, from the last section of the poem:

David, at the news of your death
the trees became sad,
not all of them of course,
but a few in every country,
and they decided to skip summer
and drop their leaves right then
and despite confusion on the ground,
birds in naked nests, and wind with nothing to do
all over the world they have proposed to keep this up.
You see, being trees they can't believe you're not coming back.
They say they will do this year after year,
stubborn and ignorant trees that they are.
They have promised to keep this up, David,
despite official protest and calm pleading of every kind.
Yes, they are determined to keep this up
until you return.

Anyway, Friday is the only day of the week I'm home alone, so I'd better take advantage of the solitude and get to work on my thesis.

Posted by Ginger at 06:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I had to drop one of my most interesting courses, Beyond Tradition/Experiemental Arts. Turns out they really do count French twice, and I'm not allowed to take six courses. I'm keeping the books though... 

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French is going much better than I expected. All summer I stressed myself out about not having the time to brush up--needlessly, it seems. I took my first test yesterday and I think I aced it. The only downside is that, because it's an immersion course, I keep trying to think in French. But with such a limited vocabulary, I spend a lot of time wading around in a banalities. Ce n'est pas bon pour ma poésie!

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Seth came home the night before last with Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films and Joshua Clover's The Totality for Kids. Are we trying to drive ourselves into the poor house buying books? Apparently we are. Fortunately gas was only $2.29 per gallon yesterday when I filled the tank. If prices remain where they are, I estimate I'll save roughly $60, or 3-4 books of poetry per month on my commute down to Boston.

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Speaking of the commute, I can't take more than another few months of this traffic. The only alternative--driving down to Lowell, catching the commuter train to North Station, taking the E line to Park St. then the dreaded B line to Boston College--would increase my daily travel time to 4.5 hours and cost at least as much driving does now. American captialism has really dropped the ball where transportation is concerned. You already know that, but I like saying it. American capitalism has really dropped the ball...

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Whoops! A very kind soul just pointed out the mistake I made with the French in the draft I posted yesterday. It was a really dumb one. Perhaps my confidence regarding the test I took is misplaced. Doh!

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I'd like to start a list of highlights from my reading. I was going to begin this morning with a poem from The Totality for Kids, but I'm out of time. The poem is available online through FindArticles.com, but they've dropped a big advertisement into the middle of it. I'd rather ask Mr. Clover for permission to reproduce the poem than link to the shady ad.

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I feel as though reading the aforementioned book is solving, or at least clarifying, something for me that I probably won't be able to articulate for some time yet. Something about pushing beyond the ironic mirror and modernity. I'll need to read more and keep thinking about it. God, I resent people who have time for poetry and are oh-so-bored by most of it. There, I said it.

Posted by Ginger at 05:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Ginger at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And because I qualified for free shipping if I spent an additional $13.xx, I also ordered Wayne Koestenbaum's Model Homes, another Zucker recommendation. I wanted to order his latest book, Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films: New Poems, but it only cost $11.86, so I added it to my wish list for later. Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films(!) If anyone's read this, or seen a review, do tell.

Posted by Ginger at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm genuinely tickled to have won Caption Contest #5. And whereas I've only ever received contributor's copies for my poetry, the caption earned me an Amazon gift certificate from the doctor and his husband! Thanks, guys!!!

I'm going to order Free Radicals: American Poets Before Their First Books (eds. Jordan Davis and Sarah Manguso)*. I've spent enough mental energy criticizing BAP that I'll happy to dive into an anthology which really does interest me. I trust the editors' tastes, and to my mind that's still the very best way to decide what to read.

That's why I'm also going order Catherine Barnett's Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced. In a recent dispatch at the Poetry Foundation's website, Rachel Zucker wrote: "I am constantly running around shouting about how much I adore this book. It is a stunning book. The book is born out of a tragic personal experience, but my god, in Catherine’s hands, the language just sings and moans and the silences make you stop breathing. It is brutal and I mean that in the best way. I don’t know that it changed my life, but I sobbed on the subway when I read it, and I’ve bought about 10 copies of it so far."

In the same post, Zucker also recommended Brian Turner's Here, Bullet. I bought a copy last weekend, and though I'm only about twenty-six pages in, I second her recommendation. Turner is an MFA grad and US Army combat veteran. He served in Iraq for a year, and the book is about his experiences there. Apparently some people are skeptical about "content" in poetry. On that subject, one can read in Zucker's Wednesday dispatch a defense with which I wholly agree.
 

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*The publisher is out of new copies, but I found one used through Amazon from Housing Works Bookstore in NYC. Check them out. All their profits go toward assisting homeless persons with HIV/AIDS.

Posted by Ginger at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Louise asked, "Hi Seth-- I have a question-- and mean to imply nothing by it, simply am curious to what your answer would be. If you were selected to appear in the series, would you decline the offer?"

To which I answered, "Louise, I can't answer for Seth, but for myself the answer is yes. At this point, for a whole host of reasons, I probably would not permit one my own poems to reprinted in BAP. (Not that I suspect I'm on the verge of being asked, mind you. And for the record, there's no chance I'm suffering from an exclusion complex, as my first poem was not published until early 2006.) That may sound catty or immature, but I think the project is sufficiently ill-conceived and poorly executed, that I would prefer not to be associated with it.

I don't intend that as a judgment upon those those who have made, or would make, a different choice. To each her own.

I do, however, believe that all of us who put our work out in the public eye ought to expect criticism. And when one is associated with a project that boldly elevates its contributors by deeming their work the "best" American poetry has to offer, one ought to expect some very pointed criticisms--not of one's character, but of the work itself and of the larger project."

Additionally:

• When PD reprinted one of my own poems, someone in the blogosphere said they found it "trite and derivative." I'll admit it's not the most stinging criticism I've ever (or will ever) receive, but it's criticism nonetheless, and I don't see how it would serve anyone's interest, least of all my own, to begrudge this critic his opinion.
  
  
• Jordan has a lot of good things to say here.
  
  
• I can't imagine the permissions nightmare anyone trying to publish an alternative to BAP might face--particularly if it was billed as such. I have a feeling Best American Poetry is sufficiently "institutional" that many poets would be reluctant to participate in such an oppositional project. And if that's true, it would render said project impossible. I could be wrong. If so, please do correct me. I'm sincerely interested in hearing what other people think.
  

Posted by Ginger at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My silence to date on this year's BAP controversy has been largely an issue of time. I started a critique of Collins's introduction, but I'm a painfully slow prose writer, and other things seemed more pressing, so I had to let it go. That said, I do think it's an important conversation, and I'm going to slog through a couple of paragraphs to tell you why...

I lean toward a belief that art which does not concern itself with ethics is mere aesthetic decoration. Ethics need not be the only, or even the most evident feature, but without any ethical sensibility what's the point? Why not fashion the world's most beautiful doilies instead? And what I believe about art, I believe about artistic communities. I have no clear moral or ethical vision for the way we ought to associate with one another, but I refuse to believe that reproducing the norms of our host culture in miniature is enough.

And that's precisely the cynical defense Lehman and Collins offer up this year. Collins makes a point of stating the obvious fact that no one would buy a book called Some Decent Poems; yet he seems perfectly content to compile such a book and slap a superlative on its cover. And when I say 'decent' I'm talking about Collins's stated aim, not his result. The anthology itself falls so far short of its advertised mission that even 'decent' seems generous. I wonder how the buying public would respond to an anthology called David Lehman's Buddies? Or Famous Poets Who Impressed Us Once From Whom We No Longer Demand Much?

Would you believe Jorie Graham wrote the following in her introduction to the 1990 editon of BAP:

"...isn't the essential characteristic of speech, and the particular virtue of its slowness, that it permits the whole fabric to be received by a listener--idea, emotion, fact, product, plot detail, motive--the listener having enough time to make up his or her mind? Isn't to describe, to articulate an argument, to use language at the speed where the complexity and sonorousness of syntax and cadence reach the listener, to use it so that the free will of the listener is addressed--free will it is the very purpose of salesmanship to bypass?" [emphasis added]

I should note here, for those of you who've read his posts, that while Seth and I agree this is something worth getting upset about, we do not agree about most of the details. For instance, I'm not terribly process-oriented and wouldn't much care how the poems were selected if the results were worth reading. Where poetry is concerned I think genius trumps effort in most cases, and consensus tends to have a dulling effect.

I think the kind of exposure Jim talks about here should be reserved for genius. 

I think Rachel Zucker published an amazing fucking poem in The Canary, and was passed over for Danielle Pafunda.

I think...but I'm out of time.

Posted by Ginger at 08:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A: "There are countless ways that scheme can go wrong that have absolutely nothing to do with a criminal conviction. If you've never kidnapped someone before, you're sure to bungle it the first time."

Sex advice from my husband-to-be (and other public defenders) brought to you by Nerve.com.

Posted by Ginger at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Too many women, single or married, childless or mothers, are endlessly fulfilling every obligation except the one to themselves. For your mental, physical, and psychological well-being, you sometimes just need to stop. Then you need to do something you want to do..."

"If you never have any time except reactive time -- things you must do for others -- you don't have a sense of control. You are interrupted all the time. Your brain has trouble resting even during sleep. Such chronic exhaustion increases the release of stress hormones, and your blood sugar rises." If this is your normal state, then the physical consequences increase your risk of diabetes, heart disease, and memory problems..." (CNN, 9/16/06)

Why aren't ethics enough? Why do we continue to need these kinds of scientific justifications to bolster our claims to autonomy? If our health weren't affected, would it be OK for others to monopolize our time with their own needs and desires? Always the body, the body. Always flesh, blood, and bone. As though our psyches were irrelevant.

Posted by Ginger at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Posted by Ginger at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Started classes on Tuesday—my last semester as a (wildly non-traditional) undergrad, and though I feel a lot of things about that, for now it's simply go! go! go! It will almost certainly be over before I've had time to reflect. The line-up includes some eleventh-hour requirements, and three truly exciting endeavors...

1. Intensive Intermediate French for Oral Proficiency: a six-credit bonanza that will have me speaking French daily. I was completely freaked out about this before I started. I have three semesters under my belt, but the last was in 2000, and this course is taught exclusively in French. Much to my surprise, however, I understand 95% of what's going on in class. Speaking is another story, but with practice I think I'll be okay.
   
   
2. The Religious Quest (comparative theology): I took the second part of this course out-of-sequence last semester. We begin each class meeting by "arriving in the room," usually through silent meditation followed by a poem. I shit you not, yesterday's poem was by Mary Oliver. Though I'm unequivocally atheist, I enjoy this class. It gives me a warm feeling I can't really explain in a brief note (though I assure you it has nothing whatsoever to do with [gag!] Mary Oliver). It's not at all a religious or even a spiritual feeling. I believe (mind + heart) that the God concept is a human invention, and nothing I hear/read/see in this class makes me feel otherwise. Nonetheless, something approaching the real seems to happen when not-terribly-religious people (i.e. most of my classmates) come together to talk about the spirit. Perhaps it's just "getting personal" with one another, and the contrast with ordinary social interaction. I don't know.
   
   
3. Beyond Tradition—Experimental Arts/20th Century: Dada Provocations, Surrealist Visions of Desire, The Marcel Duchamp Effect, Postmodern Scandals. A chance to engage historical avant-gardes and contemplate the problems their work creates for contemporary art. I'm sure I'm going to have a great deal more to say about all this throughout the semester. The day before yesterday, for instance, I was reading Tristan Tzara's Seven Dada Manifestos (see below) and re-thinking my perceptions of the Jim Show. Tactics + politics. One of the issues that came up in the first class meeting was the effect of avant-garde tactics in what I'll arbitrarily call the post-Howard Stern Age. Sans the capacity to truly shock (given the context), is what looks like contemporary avant-gardism all surface and no depth? Some critics think so. But look at what Jim's doing. He's not simply shaking his angry, radical fist at some vague establishment that's become devastatingly efficient at tuning him out—i.e. government or conservatives or popular culture.  He's hitting where it hurts, and where there's a chance it might matter.  He's hitting you and me, and he's doing it with viscousness, toilet humor, and extreme anti-authoritarianism. After all, it would be impossible to become a "follower" of Jim Behrle, even if one agreed with ALL of his critique. He's not articulating any positive program in the first place, and even if he was he'd publicly humiliate the first person who claimed to be on his bandwagon. Doth that mean Jim is DADA and therefore I approve? No. But it's something to think about.
   
   
4. Queer Literary Traditions: the literary complement to the theory course I took last semester. More than I have time to talk about right now.
   
   
5. Creative Honors Thesis: poems! poems! poems!

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My daughter brought home some fundraising materials from school yesterday. I hate these fucking things. They tantalize kids with all sorts of nifty "prizes" for selling so much junk, when in fact it's the parents who do the selling. Way to teach the kids that working for a good cause is its own reward.

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The next issue of TNHR is coming together more slowly than usual, but I'm genuinely excited about what we have in store. Richard Siken commented over on Seth's blog recently about his preference for editors who are advocates rather than gatekeepers. That's exactly the role I'm chasing this time around. Stay tuned.

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I have to drive down to New Jersey tonight and back on Sunday. Damn you, Connecticut! Your highways suck. Miles of Boring dotted here and there with Ugly. How I have longed to carve you right out of the map, stitching northern New York to southern Massachusetts! My mother recently relocated herself west, which makes this drive five hours long on a good day. I shudder to think what Friday night will be like, and Sunday afternoon. But the school schedules (mine and Jacinda's) leave me no choice.

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On deck for this weekend: Plato's Symposium and Meno; John Heartfield's photomontages & Hannah Hoch's collages; a shitload of French; two new poems; and a theology reflection paper/group project.

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Better get my nose to the grindstone now, eh? But before I do...

from "Monsiur Antipyrine's Manifesto" by Tristan Tzara: "DADA is our intensity: it erects inconsequential bayonets and the Sumatral head of German babies; Dada is life with neither bedroom slippers nor parallels; it is against and for unity and definitely against the future; we are wise enough to know that our brains are going to become flabby cushions, that our antidogmatism is as exclusive as a civil servant, and that we cry liberty but are not free; a severe necessity with neither discipline nor morals and that we spit on humanity."

Posted by Ginger at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Following from the comments I made over at Seth's (who was in turn responding to Charlie):

• What is a great poem vs. a good poem vs. a mediocre poem vs. a good one? Can one really rate a poem, say on a scale of one to ten, or do most poems either hit or miss? It's easy enough to think about books this way--"Okay, but not great," "Good, though uneven"--but is there enough material in individual poems, particularly in magazines where they tend to be short and isolated from the rest of the poet's work, to make such fine distinctions? If a poem seems to say something important, but the language is dry, do we call it a failure, or a mediocre poem? If the language is dazzling, but the voice is inauthentic, do we call it a miss or say it's good, but not great? If nothing in a poem invites me to read it a second time, was it worth having read the first time? I have no definite answers to any of these questions.
  
  
• Is a writer "owed" anything by his or her editors, readers, critics for simply having written? As an editor I struggle with this one from time to time. I personally read nearly all the poems that are submitted to us, and sometimes I get peeved at submitters. That is, sometimes I think people (too many people) are asking for a read who don't bother to read a fraction (if any) of the decent work already in print. Do I owe it to them to read each of their poems from start to finish? In practice I do, but I'm beginning to wonder if we wouldn't cut our response time in half, without impacting the quality of our journal, if I didn't. A related question: What, if anything, is the poet who publishes in a magazine, or who puts out a book, "owed" by critics? This is different than asking how a critic should behave. I have very little respect for spiteful, self-serving critics, but that's primarily because the way they engage with texts produces nothing of value. As to the poets themselves, should I try to like their work? Or should they be trying to win me over? Third possibility: trying is not an option for either party. Whatever's going to happen between reader and writer is going to happen and can't be forced. To put a finer point on it, a poet can work to fulfill his or her own vision, but can't remake that vision in line with a given public's desires.
  
  

• Related question: Should art be democratic? Do the same ethics which apply to social and political life hold for the creative process? (I mean everything from the act of creation, through the publication, reception, and recognition of the work.) In terms of the opportunity to create I'd have a real problem saying it should be limited to those who exhibit talent early or have independent means. On the other hand, I don't think the hardest working (or nicest, or most generous, etc.) poet in America is necessarily the one who deserves the Pulitzer Prize. I'm sure other people have already thought about this more cogently, and I should probably read those people. (I need one of those genius grants so I can take two or three years off just to read).

Posted by Ginger at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)